Aid arrives in Pakistan

Reporter: Geoff Thompson

TONY JONES: Aid is again pouring into the South Asia disaster zone, after relief efforts were briefly held up by hail storms and the threat of mudslides. But amid the devastation, survivors are still being found four days after the quake.

The ABC's South Asia correspondent Geoff Thompson has made it into the ruined city of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani controlled Kashmir, and filed this report.

GEOFF THOMPSON: Heavy-lift NATO and American helicopters land in Muzaffarabad for the first time. At last, a way out for some of the badly injured from Pakistani Kashmir's decimated capital. And this is what made an earlier arrival impossible - torrential rains stopped the rescue effort yesterday, the drenching not discriminating between the living and the dead. For survivors without shelter, it brought even more misery - if that's possible - to their already shockingly desperate situation.

UNNAMED PAKISTANI WOMAN: We need tents, home, houses, you know. There is no bathrooms, washrooms, water. Everything we need, we want, there is nothing.

GEOFF THOMPSON: A grim procession of dead bodies is unearthed from the debris, but still sometimes there are miraculous signs of life.

Here, a frantic effort by French rescue workers and local survivors to save a child hoped to be alive in the rubble. Suddenly, it is certain, as a frightened little boy is spotted, using sophisticated periscope cameras. A call for quiet and a father's reassuring words. It's his boy and another child caught in an air pocket. Then an urgent effort spurred on by rare, real hope, answered by a moment of deliverance. Shocked, but amazingly well, four-year-old Fraz is given a biscuit. In Muzaffarabad, desperate looters have raided some aid trucks at gunpoint.

With the weather clearing, along with the roads into Muzaffarabad, a steady flow of assistance is now arriving. But so many places in the surrounding area are still receiving no help at all. Survivors are trekking for days to reach here, bringing stories of desperation from their villages. Mohammad Sagir travelled 15km to plead for help.

"In those places," he says, "there's nothing to eat, nothing to wear and no tents for sleeping. We want to media to come there and show the world."

Across Kashmir, there is still so much suffering that the world can only imagine.